Millennial Hub

Coping up with a Perfectionist Professor

By Shawn Fernandez

I believe we all have our
own unique ways to attain perfection. Most of us desire to be better and aim
for what is best. Striving for perfection is really a good thing if it means
seeking constant improvement of our character and our abilities.

However, there are some
cases where being a perfectionist seems unreasonable. Having a wrong perception
about it leads to the abuse of power, and a person with this kind of mentality
becomes harsh and inconsiderate. This brings fear among the people he or she
works with. It makes them feel little about themselves. They become hesitant to
speak up their ideas and disoriented in doing their tasks, and so they often
ended up doing the opposite of the perfectionist’s expectations.

I think this practice must
be stopped. Aiming for excellence must not mean being insensitive towards the
feelings of people around us. If you are trying to correct a person out of
genuine concern, there is nothing wrong with that. But, if you do it just
because you wanted to impose what you want, then you are being totally out of
the line.

For instance, most
students from junior and senior high school already have a thesis or paper
research and it is normal to commit mistakes a couple of times in the
beginning. Our professor made some corrections to improve our research and we
applied those corrections in our work. We made a lot of attempts to make it
better and this meant a lot of financial expenses in our part.

It had cost us a great
deal of time. We had run out of resources so we offered to show our research by
using machines like laptop of phone to be able to save money from reprinting,
but our professor wanted our research to be printed. I didn’t know why she
couldn’t grant that simple request. We followed her instructions though. After
other rounds of exhaustive attempts in developing our research, our professor
suddenly decided to change our research title. She said she wanted a better
topic and it really made us feel so frustrated and annoyed, thinking what we
have gone through, all the attempts, expenses, the time we have consumed, now
have to be put to trash and go back to zero.

Were her actions
justified? Was she just concerned about us having a better topic? Did she even
consider our efforts? Our hardships? I know that being a professor she must
have known better. She’s the expert in this field. We respect her for that.
Deep inside me, however, I asked myself if her ways of dealing with people were
right and acceptable. I felt that all our efforts had come to waste. It was
really disappointing. It seemed like she did not value our sacrifices, that she
only cared about having the research done the way that she wanted. But who were
we to question? We were just her students, and arguing about the matter seemed
inappropriate and disrespectful, wasn’t it? Or maybe we were just driven by our
emotions. Maybe we saw her point in a wrong angle. I knew that as a teacher, it
was her duty to correct us and educate us.

Maybe we were not used to
such methods. To me, what she did was really quite rude. Perfection must not
always mean we had to deal with people with an iron arm and a cold stone heart.

If I get the chance to
become a teacher someday, I will not use one stiff method dealing with my
students, because most methods are applicable to all. I will walk with them in
the process, deal with them with a gentler spirit and make sure everything I do
is for their growth.